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Saturday, June 25, 2011

Can you separate the WTO from the Doha Round?

The prolonged standoff over “new” market access, by preventing the WTO from fulfilling these objectives, is causing serious damage to the global trading system. The solution to the WTO’s problems, therefore, lies not in decoupling the WTO from the Doha Round, but in enabling it to achieve an ambitious Doha outcome based on its development mandate.

[…]Doha is a symptom of the deeper crisis in the WTO which is essentially due to the changed political economy of the organisation. Only when WTO members arrive at a shared political understanding regarding the future role of the organisation can we begin to see light at the end of the tunnel. Without such an understanding, arguments for decoupling the WTO from Doha have little meaning.

About

Formerly, economics officer at Asian Development Bank, Nepal Resident Mission. Worked as a researcher at SAWTEE, Kathmandu. Also, worked as a consultant for Ministry of Commerce & Supplies, Government of Nepal; FAO; UNDP, GIZ-CIM, and ADB among others. I was an op-ed columnist for Republica between December 2008 – June 2012. I also worked as a Junior Fellow for Trade, Equity & Development program at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, D.C .